


The Unlikely Charm Of Messiness

by Lenore



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Community: picfor1000, Developing Relationship, F/M, Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-04
Updated: 2013-06-04
Packaged: 2017-12-13 23:55:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lenore/pseuds/Lenore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Joan and Sherlock have a moment over pot stickers. Joan ponders what to do about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unlikely Charm Of Messiness

**Author's Note:**

> I really appreciate and enjoy that the show has created such a wonderful platonic relationship between Joan and Sherlock, and yet sometimes I do like to imagine them kissing. Written for the picfor1000 challenge based on this photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/arjunpurky/2482517713/lightbox/

Every day, 80,000 cars and trucks pass over the Brooklyn Bridge. Joan has learned this from Sherlock of course. He pointed it out during one of their cases to illustrate why it was highly improbable that the tech company CEO and the suspected corporate spy just happened to get into a fender bender on the bridge's lower deck. He insisted it was far more likely a rather cunning way to hand off stolen trade secrets in the guise of exchanging insurance information. As usual, he was right.

There are other things Joan has learned about the bridge. The roadbed rises exactly 135 feet above the water. Construction took thirteen years to complete and cost twenty-seven lives. This information is also courtesy of Sherlock, although what it had to do with their case she can't guess. Maybe it was just for her edification. 

The sun slants through the cables, a Cubist fantasy of orange-tinted sky and industrial metal, and Joan can't help but see her relationship with Sherlock written in the bridge's superstructure, opposing tensions that create strength, stability. At a glance, there seems no way it should work, but somehow it does. 

Their latest case is a murder investigation. Last night they read through what felt like thousands of police files, looking for a connection between the investment banker husband they suspected of having hired someone to kill his wife and a very long list of lowlifes who might have been the shooter. 

When midnight had come and gone, Joan finally called for dinner. Preventing starvation tends to be her job. Sherlock would work until he either solved the case or passed out from lack of food. They spread out the cartons on the coffee table and sat cross-legged on the floor, eating and reading. She reached for the green curry as he reached for the mango salad, their hands colliding somewhere in the middle, and suddenly they were having a moment, conscious and a little ridiculous, over the pot stickers. 

It hardly came as a surprise, but there was still the matter of what to do about it. So this morning she ran. 

Of course she runs every morning when their cases allow. Today, though, she was too restless for her usual route through the park and around the reservoir—in no mood for going in circles. So she took off downtown, more island in that direction. The blocks blurred past until the numbers eventually gave way to named streets and then she headed east. She'd always meant to run across the Brooklyn Bridge. Today seemed as good as a day as any. 

On the other side, she slows down to a walk, and after a few more blocks she stops to stretch. There's a shop on the corner with gingham curtains in the window, probably meant to be ironic, and a sign outside with "coffee" written in very large chalk letters. She stands in a long line of fedora-wearing hipsters and harried parents trying to soothe fretful toddlers waiting her turn for caffeine.

Joan has always been a precise person; the imprecise don't become surgeons. She likes lines, rules, things in their places. Joan is a genius at boundaries. Going from Sherlock's sober companion to his colleague in investigation was one thing. Allowing it to become—whatever that was last night is another thing entirely, a messy something.

Historically Joan has hated messes, and allowing someone to be work and home and friend and more—that's just about the messiest thing she can imagine. Although she must admit that if anyone can make messiness worthwhile it's certainly Sherlock. He has a way of turning blurred lines into the kind of adventure she hadn't even realized she craved. 

She takes her latte down into the subway and catches the A back uptown. A couple in their early twenties gets on the same car with her, and it takes no more than a minute to figure out that they've come from working in the local community garden. There's dirt under their nails and grass stains on the man's jeans, and Joan noticed a flyer advertising the garden on the bulletin board back at the coffee shop.

A minute. That's not Sherlock quick, but it's not bad either. 

At home she finds him in the kitchen, charring bits of defenseless food in an extremely unsuccessful attempt at cooking. 

"You're going to set off the smoke detector," she tells him, going to the refrigerator for a bottle of water.

"Faithfully observed, Watson, and you would no doubt be right if the owner of this brownstone held any regard for the fire code."

She gives him a look from behind her water bottle. He gives her a look right back as he flips—whatever that is that he's burned beyond all recognition. It seems only sensible to take the pan out of his hand and dump the whole thing into the trash. "There. Now you're both out of your misery."

This earns her a flicker of a smile, and somehow that decides it. She marches the three steps over to him, puts her hand against his jaw, and kisses him. It takes him a moment to respond, just a moment to slide his arms around her and kiss back, but this is Sherlock Holmes, and Joan enjoys being able to surprise him even if it is only for a moment.

"Now we won't have to wonder when it's going to happen," she tells him when she pulls back at last. 

"Yes, well done, Watson. Now we'll just have to wonder when, _if_ it will ever happen again. Congratulations. You've very cleverly exchanged one conundrum for another."

She leans in, presses her mouth to his, long and lingering and almost chaste. "I'm going to take a shower."

She can feel his gaze tracking her up the stairs, and she can picture the way he's watching her, like she's a favorite mystery that he'll never quite manage to solve. She likes that best of all.


End file.
